In this original, sweeping, and intimate biography, Gleick moves between a comprehensive historical portrait and a dramatic focus on Newton?s significant letters and unpublished notebooks to illuminate the real importance of his work in physics, in optics, and in calculus. He makes us see the old intuitive, alchemical universe out of which Newton?s mathematics first arose and shows us how Newton?s ideas have altered all forms of understanding from history to philosophy. And he gives us a moving account of the conflicting impulses that pulled at this man?s heart: his quiet longings, his rage, his secrecy, the extraordinary subtleties of a personality that were mirrored in the invisible forces he first identified as the building blocks of science. More than biography, more than history, more than science, Isaac Newton tells us how, through the mind of one man, we have come to know our place in the cosmos.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

1. 1.What imployment is he fit for
2. 2.Some philosophical questions
3. 3.To resolve problems by motion
4. 4.Two great orbs
5. 5.Bodys & senses
6. 6. Theoddest if not the most considerable detection
7. 7.Reluctancy and rection -8.In the midst of a whirlwind
8. 9.All things are corruptible
9. 10.Heresy, blasphemy, idolatry
10. 11.First principles
11. 12.Every body perseveres
12. 13.Is he like other men
13. 14.No man is a witness in his own cause
14. 15. Themarble index of a mind.